Megabride
...I’m very pleased to see MEGABRIDE getting such attention. Our problem was never my resentment of your success, but my fear of the very limited sort of success that you were more + more willing to settle for. If that’s what you’d really wanted, I would’ve been happy to cheer you on, but underneath you were relentlessly hating yourself for betraying your artistic conscience, for abandoning your love of Language, Style, + Form, + for selling out at 38 to a marketplace you’d always despised. Worse yet, you’ve been trying to deceive yourself (unsuccessfully, as I know) into believing that what you were publishing did have artistic integrity. But worst of all is what your self-hatred did to our marriage. Just as you turned words into wooden tools to make money, you tried to turn me into a piece of furniture, “the little woman” whose “function” was to keep the household running, the feather-headed feather-duster. The whole world of stereotypes that you were furnishing your fiction with you desperately began imposing on our lives together…
...What do I think of MEGABRIDE (+ I thank you for the signed copy)? Do you really somehow still seek my valueless approval? Do you really want the truth about MEGABRIDE, or have you really BADE ME RIG up a critique that should stroke your ego? First of all, I recognize in MEGABRIDE an older short story of yours REMADE BIG. Does the book cry out for recognition as Art? No, the author’s clear message is GI’ ME BREAD. A genuine work of literature should fill my soul with destabilizing visions, BREED MAGI in my skull. You are always precise with words, but I don’t care whether you call a seat a chair or an EDGE A BRIM; what I miss is any urgency of voice; I get just the carefully BRED IMAGE of the impeccable technician. + yet you manage to IMBED RAGE in the book of a sort you are pitifully unaware of. Your elusive heroine, whom the males in the book hate even as they frantically, but vainly, pursue her, is nothing more than a BED MIRAGE that keeps your plot clanking along. Remember how you used to DIG ME BARE? I always wanted an even GAMIER BED, but you saw my lust as GRIME ABED, my sex as A BEGRIMED leer, but what could BE-GERM IDA worse than your fear of your own desire? Do you in DREAM GIBE at me still for having once made you so wet? Did you always prefer me afterward, deodorized + blow-dried? But what would such an ARID GEM BE worth? You give service to a BAD REGIME, C.K.,
+ your hard-boiled style betrays the prisoner within. You’ve developed an acute form of BRIG EDEMA, a swelling of the ego that occurs when the spirit is in chains. You’ve descended, in one easy refusal, from the snowy peaks of Mt. Ida to the blacktop of MEDIABERG. May the light from that lofty RIDGE BEAM down on you once again + , who knows, turn you into a MID-AGE REB? With pleasure would I for less than one thin DIME BARGE in on you while you grit your teeth over this ball-snipping book review, C.K. But can the truth take anything more from us than we both gave up to hypocrisy? So maybe it’s ME I BADGER after all. Meanwhile, the cruddy truth that we both know so well, C.K., is that MEGABRIDE is a MEAGER BID for acclaim, about as weak-kneed as the hackneyed men who trail your insubstantial heroine from bed to bed. Admit it, C.K. MEGABRIDE is A BIG MERDE.
Take heart. I expect to nag you no more. I am about to vanish from the scene. I have but one small request to make of you before parting. Please ask Margie De B. to give me a call. Would you, please?...
I was amazed that she could ask me for any favor after such a self-congratulatory, exhibitionistic hatchet-job. At the same time I was glad to learn that my once-a-week housekeeper, Margie De Bianco, with whom my overly democratic Ida used to be thick as thieves at one time, had no use for her any more. She evidently wanted Margie to continue cleaning up the minor messes she made with her life. Why wouldn’t Margie get in touch with her? Ida was as undemanding an employer as a maid could imagine. Did it have to do with the way Margie seemed so excessively worried about me ever since Ida split? Could it be something stupid, like loyalty? From a 25-year-old housemaid with enough problems of her own—like tracking down a slippery ex for child support?
Loyalty seemed a little far-fetched. Now why the hell wouldn’t she want to vacuum Ida’s floors? I began to suspect, suddenly, that Ida’s message was meant for me, and not Margie. Margie damn well was still vacuuming Ida’s floors, but Ida for some reason wanted me to think they were no longer in touch. But what could they possibly be doing behind my back that would make the slightest difference to me?
Suddenly it dawned on me. The trashbasket in my office! I had taken for granted, all these years (it was five years she had been cleaning for me), that my garbage “went” directly down the chute in the hallway into the roach-filled jaws of the building compactor. Could it be that, for some dubious reason, Margie had been swiping my early drafts all this time? She was not the type of person who had any literary interests whatsoever. It was evident from the shape of her body that her spare time was spent on something other than reading in bed.
